"If you are going back, my lord, I go with you."
"I have no choice," he answered gravely; "I am pledged to the cause. I have my company to lead into action. But the case is different with thee, Dicon; bethink thee well."
"I have thought of everything, my lord," I answered. "I go not back unless it be with you."
"Thou art an obstinate lad, Dicon," said my lord, with a smile; "yet I like thee the better for thy stubbornness. Then if thy mind is made up, let us forth without loss of time. If we wait for the skies to smile again, we may have long to tarry."
We had soon thanked and rewarded and said farewell to our hosts, and were in the saddle once more. Travelling was becoming bad by reason of the persistent rain, albeit the land sorely needed it. I wondered how it had fared with our soldiers, and whether the cold and the wet had damped at all their martial ardour.
It was but some seven miles, I take it, from where we started to the bridge at Keynsham, or Cansham as some write it; and long before we reached the spot we knew that the army was nigh at hand, because all the people of the scattered villages were going forth to see, and we saw horsemen scouring the country in search of provisions wherewith to feed the men. Sheep and oxen were being driven towards the camp, and though in the main payment was made for what was taken, yet there were some amongst the farmers and peasants whose faces were dark and lowering, and who muttered that a bad King was better than an army on the march.
The bridge over the river at Keynsham, which the enemy had broken down, had been repaired by Captain Tyler with skill and despatch; already the Duke and his gentlemen had passed over it, and the rest of the army was following when we got up. Pressing on after the Duke's party, we were not long in coming up with it. Then I fell into the rear, and mingled with the men: whilst my lord went straight to His Grace, and was welcomed very graciously, as I heard.
The news which I brought from the city, despite the favourable feeling of the common people, did not seem to the soldiers to be very encouraging. They shook their heads when they heard of the Duke of Beaufort's threat, and more than one veteran who had seen something of war in Holland, from which country they had come over with the Duke, said that in a walled and garrisoned city the towns-folk were helpless as sheep if the soldiers kept true to their leaders; and so far as we had heard, there had been no disaffection amongst the regular troops. It was only the militiamen that deserted to the Duke.
Later on word came that the Duke had been very sad on hearing the news brought by my lord the Viscount, and had been heard to exclaim,—